Grasshopper Review – Is It Really The Best VoIP Service?

Grasshopper is a virtual phone service that provides small business owners with their own cloud-based toll-free or local phone number.

The company was a small start-up that quickly gained the attention of many popular news outlets and blogs including Forbes and Fast Company.

The company has been called innovative and praised for their entrepreneurial spirit.

With so many new startups and small businesses popping up all over the place, business owners are constantly looking for better ways to handle their phone systems. And this is where Grasshopper steps in.

To help you out with your decision of whether or not to give Grasshopper a try, we’ve compiled reviews from our own website plus quite a few user reviews from around the web to see what Grasshopper customers had to say about the company.

We have also compared the most popular pricing options for small business owners to help you pick the best plan for your business.

For an in-depth comparison of the top three VoIP providers (Nextiva, RingCentral, and Phone.com), we recommend that you go read our buyer’s guide.

From the positive reviews that we found, most customers seem to be satisfied with two very big aspects of Grasshopper’s service.

The first of these is the pricing. Most of the users said that the price they pay is fair for the service that they receive.

With an entry price of as low as $12 per month, it’s hard to argue with this point. And you will be pressed to find another service with as many features for any less than that.

Grasshopper also offers plenty of useful add-ons that can be tied to your account. Most of these add-ons are reasonably priced as well.

You can port over numbers that you purchased elsewhere, get access to “on hold” music and even take advantage of their inbound faxing services.

Seriously, there is a long list of things that Grasshopper users say they find extremely useful.There are two features that seem to be a favorite for most users.

The first one of these is the ability to get all of your voicemails and faxes delivered straight to your email inbox.

Users have said that this saves them time and helps keep everything just that much more centralized.

The second one is the conference calling feature. With conference calling, you can hold a meeting with your team, no matter where you all may be. And, it can be used from any cell phone or mobile device.

It provides you with quality audio, toll-free dialing and call recording options. The best part about this feature is that all of your conferences can be scheduled from Outlook.

Most users have also stated that it’s easy and painless to contact customer service when they have a problem. Users also claim that the support is fast, friendly, and very helpful. All of the plans that Grasshopper offers comes with email.

And you get access to their support center, which is rather robust. In addition to all this, every plan also receives 24/7 phone support. Customer support is a department that many companies fall short in, but Grasshopper is definitely not one of them.

The vast majority of negative reviews came from customers who said their main issue was a rather big one.

The problem that they are talking about is that of having a difficult time using or even setting up the phone system.

This is a problem that can lead to missed business calls and texts. This can mean missed business and money.

Many users have complained that the voicemail system isn’t as bad but is still highly complicated. For most users, the problem was trying to record a simple voicemail greeting.

As it turns out to this simple feature turns into a large task. Others yet have said that it isn’t recording that causes them issue.

Instead, the problem arises when trying to get it to actually work. When it does, however, it seems to do fine.

The call forwarding service was the second most lodged complaint. Users felt that it is simply too complicated to get set up properly.

These two problems alone have been enough reason for many businesses to leave Grasshopper altogether.

A few also claimed that once they decided to cancel their service, it took several days or even weeks to get their phone number back from Grasshopper.

When this happens, it appears that the user is losing out on valuable phone calls and text messages as they wait for Grasshopper to release their number to them.

Couple that with the issue of simply trying to set up the phone service, to begin with, it is easy to see why some users are very disgruntled about the service they received while with Grasshopper.

Most Helpful Positive User Review

“Very happy with them. Everything we need, nothing we don’t as a digital start-up. The vast majority of our incoming contacts are email, but we’ve got a professional, toll-free vanity number that looks professional and works well for our large enterprise customers and prospects. Very friendly and attentive account management and customer service. Strong standard feature set, and flexible, reasonably priced optional add-ons to meet your needs. Things like voicemail transcription, professional voicemail recordings, dial-by-name directories, routing to personal numbers, and a dead simple interface for configuring.”

—Dan Dullivan

Most Helpful Negative User Review

“Installation was not user-friendly, required multiple conversations with tech support. It turned out that their text messaging was not working at the time when we signed up, despite the feature being listed. We experienced nothing but problems with the functionality of the product. Then, when we tried to cancel the service, we have been unable to get our phone number released by Grasshopper and back to our service. We are not receiving our voicemails or texts for the last two weeks. The only part of this that was easy was getting grasshopper to set up the phone number in the first place; they were great getting the service changed from T-Mobile. But getting it back again has been impossible.”

—George Ledyard

Other Grasshopper Reviews From Users Around the Web

We have gathered a few other resources that you can use to find additional Grasshopper customer reviews that may be of some help to you.

We rated the following review sites on a scale from poor to excellent based on how trustworthy and useful the reviews appear.

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Here’s How We Determined The Quality of User Review Websites

G2 Crowd has excellent quality reviews from verified users only, and it asks specific questions to which most users gave well thought out answers. However, they don’t have a lot of reviews at the time of writing this guide.

Better Business Bureau verifies that the reviewers are current users. However, the average rating is a composite score of the user reviews. The site also factors in the BBB A+ rating. Because of this, it may not always be reflective of how Grasshopper users truly feel.

Virtual Phone System Reviews has a ton of recent reviews from customers. Unfortunately, they allow people who work for Grasshopper to leave reviews. This has lead to multiple fake 5-star reviews being posted. This makes the average review appear a lot less authentic. Luckily, it’s easy to sort out the user reviews from the employee reviews.

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Grasshopper has 4 subscription options that you can choose from, and they range in price from $12-$199 per month.

The main differences between the plans are the total number of minutes that are included in the plan and the number of phone numbers that you will receive.

In this chart, we have compared a few of the most important features between the three main plans that we feel are most suitable for any small business owner.

We have not included the fourth plan in this chart as it is significantly out of the price range of most small business owners. After all, our focus is on helping small businesses grow.

Best Pricing Option For Small Business Owners

This option still gives you a professional number to put on your website and other promotional materials.

Choosing between the other two options depends mostly on how many minutes you think your business will need. A good thing about Grasshopper is that you can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time you need.

With Pay As You Grow you will get an amazing package for only $49 a month that comes with 2,000 minutes each month, two toll-free or local numbers, call screening and forwarding, inbound fax and a long list of features.

Conclusion

In this review, we looked at what the Grasshopper VoIP service provides.

We have looked at what it does and does not do very well as well as who it would appeal to the most.

We spent countless hours scouring through various review sites and forums to find out what people had to say about Grasshopper.

As a result, we found was that the cons outweighed the pros. While Grasshopper adds some incredible functionality to your phone system and has a relatively low entry fee, it sadly falls short in the most crucial areas.

The number of users who have had trouble even simply getting the system set up properly is astounding, to say the least.

Runner up to that were all the issues regarding trouble porting over numbers or getting numbers back after users decided to leave the service. Many said this process took them weeks and cost them business.

In conclusion, we cannot recommend Grasshopper as the best VoIP solution. If you are a small business just starting out and do not have a large budget.

We recommend either only using Grasshopper as a stepping stone to get up and running or save up and spend a little more for another service with better reviews.

Small Business Phone System Buyer’s Guide

The search for the right fit for your business should not stop with one review. To find the best option you need to have some similar services with which to compare.

So, you are still unsure if Grasshopper is the right virtual phone system for your small business? That’s okay, there are plenty of other companies that provide the same type of service.

And because you have so many other choices we encourage you to see what each of them have to offer. When you are ready to decide you will know what service should get your business.

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